The Ravens stats in this loss weren’t so bad if you converted them to metric…

I’ve never quite seen politics be so invasive in our everyday lives, and to see it finally hemorrhage into a “football” Sunday and essentially infiltrate America’s favorite escapist sport is just a shame. While my years don’t represent a robust breadth of experience to draw from, as any middling in-their-thirties Xennial would say, it’s easy to state that beyond the labor disputes and other benign conflicts that arise when large private businesses and governments interact (i.e. stadium issues), recently there have been only two resounding issues where national politics has bled into the world of sports and vica versa: Steroids and Concussions. Remember the good old days?

To be clear, this conversation actually started last season when Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the National Anthem starting in the 2016 preseason to advocate equality and to raise awareness of Police violence against the Black community. At the time, I voiced the same opinion I hold today: It was a flawed message, not that it wasn’t a good one, or one that I didn’t support, only that powerful and effective activism requires a knowledge of the issues, something that Kaepernick clearly didn’t have a grasp of, especially and specifically when he recited long-debunked right-wing talking points in terms of Hillary Clinton’s public record and relied on the lazy “they’re both the same” arguments. And while his “kneeling” protest was provocative and an overall positive (how can practicing your constitutional right to free speech ever be a negative?), my opinion and his actions probably matters less when you realize that this conversation started long, long ago, during one of the darkest poxes in the history of not just America, but the world: the enslavement of men by other men. And this conversation has never really reached a satisfactory conclusion. Hell, I would say this conversation has never really reached a satisfactory state of debate…